The Home

SEVENTEEN

The conference room was quiet, the lights low. Francis Bondurant fidgeted with the glass in his hand. He longed for another drink, but he didn't dare let Dr. Kracowski learn of his vice. At least on duty and in public, he was a ginger ale man.

Across the polished table from him, Kracowski and Swenson sat side by side. This room was where the Board of Directors held its quarterly meetings, and was several doors down from where Bondurant had imagined seeing the old woman the previous night.

No, not imagined-she was REAL, she stared at me with that grinning forehead scar and Bondurant tossed down a couple of fingers of the ginger ale. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his suit, realized he was sweating, and loosened his tie. More oxygen to the brain never hurt, though surely his heart was thundering enough to send plenty of air to his skull. ' "You're melting," Kracowski said. "What's going on?"

"It's like this, sir-"

Paula Swenson smiled at Bondurant's term of subjugation and moved closer to Kracowski. She had selected the alpha male and her eyes said she had nailed him until death or a hefty divorce settlement, whichever came first. She cared not one bit for the children, for the Home, or for Wendover's good standing. She made her reputation on her back, not on her feet.

Bondurant clenched one fist beneath the table, imitating the grip of The Cheek Turner, picturing Swenson bent over his desk and squeaking, softly at first and then in real pain, as he brought the paddle down again and again and again "Now you're evaporating as well," Kracowski said.

Bondurant wiped the sweat from his eyebrows. "Too many things going on at once. Those two directors showing up on short notice, your experiments increasing in frequency, the staff changing over, and state inspectors coming by in a few days. This McDonald guy lurking around all the time. And these new supporters, I know they're a godsend but it's hard to get a handle on them."

"Pressure is internal, not external," Kracowski said.

"That's a good one," Swenson said. "You'll have to write that down."

"I already have."

"It's just"-Bondurant paused to finish his glass-"the staff has become a little unsettled."

"Unsettled?"

"Well, it's about the… you know…"

"If I knew, your calling this meeting would have been unnecessary."

"Yes, sir."

"My time is quite valuable. Should you ever need a private consultant, you'll find that you couldn't afford me."

"Lucky for Wendover that you're willing to work for free," Swenson said, as if hardly happy about it.

"I'm not working, I'm playing. I'm playing the biggest game of all, isn't that right, Bondurant?"

"Game?" Bondurant's hands trembled.

"The God game. Healing little souls, that's what we do here, isn't it? Redeeming the sins of society. Fixing God's mistakes."

Bondurant wished he had a little something in his glass. He'd even risk some whiskey. The knot in his throat tightened. Nothing to do but say it plain. "It's about the ghosts."

Kracowski had been leaning back in his chair, casual, perhaps with a hand on Swenson's thigh under the table. Now he sat forward and stared as if trying to decide to what species Bondurant belonged. After a long pause, in which the room's air grew more dense, Kracowski smiled. "Ghosts."

Swenson giggled. "Spooky-boo. So that's what's been coming to me in the night? I thought it was you, Richard."

She squeezed the doctor's arm but he pushed her away. "Not now, Paula. The man's serious."

Bondurant wished that he, like the mad woman he'd seen, could disappear into the wall. Kracowski despised weakness, and belief in anything that couldn't be proven was a weakness. "We've had three staff members make reports. One even quit over it," Bondurant said.

"What did these reports consist of? The same old campfire story about the old man in the gown? I've heard that one myself. Ever since I was four. Do you know what an urban legend is, Bondurant?"

He nodded in response.

"Well, Wendover seems to have its very own urban legend, the one about the dreary little hunchback they call 'Look-Out Larry.' I'm quite sure the so-called 'ghost' predates the existence of Wendover Home, and local townsfolk will be more than happy to share the legends their grandparents whispered about this place. Every town has a ghost, and every old building has one."

"Wendover's only a dozen years old but the building's been here for more than seventy years."

Swenson said, "Does that mean lots of people have died here?"

Kracowski laughed. "Nobody ever dies at Wendover. Do they, Bondurant?"

"Only for a little while," he said under his breath.

"What's that?"

"I said, 'Not like Enlo.'"

"Ah, the home where the little girl died from a restraint hold."

"Alleged restraint hold" Bondurant said. "That technique is approved by Social Services. The girl most likely had an undetected heart condition. But it should serve as a warning. Enlo was put on six months' probation."

"Too bad. You'd think a just God would let the girl's ghost return from the grave and dispense justice."

Swenson touched the doctor's shoulder. "You're funny, Richard. No wonder I like you."

Kracowski frowned at her. "Not in front of the staff. How many times do I have to tell you?"

Bondurant wondered if Kracowski really believed the staff didn't know about their little affair. But Kracowski wasn't common, he didn't deal in gossip, and to him, casual conversation about personal matters was poison. He lacked humanity even though he professed to work in human services. Even though Wendover and its clients were sport to Kracowski, he took the game seriously.

"There's still the problem of the reports, whether you believe them or not," Bondurant said. "The staff members talk among themselves. Things get whispered."

"I'll take care of that." Kracowski's eyes grew even darker.

"Three people saw the man in the robe. I don't think all three are crazy."

"But maybe two of them?" Swenson said.

"By the descriptions, I think 1 know who the man might be."

"Ah," Kracowski said. "Here it comes. One of your long-lost prophets, no doubt. I hope it's Ezekiel, who saw the chariot of fire. Or Elijah and the burning bush. All the Old Testament's best lunatics were pyromaniacs."

Bondurant fingered the rim of the glass. He bowed his head and prayed for strength. Confession was good for the soul, but the opening line was always a tough one. "You know that when the home was finished in the 1930s it became a state psychiatric hospital?"

Kracowski waved a hand. "Of course. Mary G. Mitchell Hospital. It was a training ground for some of North Carolina's finest doctors, and brought forth some solid clinical and theoretical research."

"Yes. But we all can agree that the treatments of the era weren't necessarily… humane."

"Science is built more on mistakes than on successes," Kracowski said. "And so, I might add, is religion."

"Maybe. But frontal lobotomy, coma therapy, forced sterilization, electroshock-"

"I don't perform electroshock."

"Certainly not."

"And then came the advent of the new class of drugs. The late 1940s and 1950s were a wondrous time For pills. It was more wonderful for the doctors than the patients. Instead of having to spend hours listening to troubled souls, you could scribble something on a notepad and send them off to the nearest pharmacy."

"Avoiding the real problem," Bondurant said.

"Neither of us approves of drugs," Kracowski said. "You, on religious grounds, and I oppose them because they distort the brain's harmonics."

"But then you get to fix them," Swenson said. "You can realign their energy fields."

"You're pretty smart for a doctor," Kracowski said to her, with an edge of sarcasm she didn't grasp. "But I'd rather the patient be healed in the first place and not have to submit to treatments. Harmony is the brain's natural state. We can blame civilization, socialization, and, yes, religion, for the pressures and stresses that have thrown the modern brain out of balance."

"I've read your theories, Doctor." Bondurant literally ached for that whiskey now. If only God would grant him eight ounces of ninety-proof bourbon. "But there are mysteries that science will never be able to solve. Like the ghost."

"You and your damned ghost. I still say it's nothing but wishful thinking mixed with the power of suggestion."

Bondurant's stomach tensed. This was going to be difficult. "I saw one myself."

The room grew so quiet that Bondurant could hear his heartbeat in his ears. Dr. Swenson stopped picking lint from her blouse.

Kracowski narrowed his eyes. "Your hunchback, I presume? Thanks to the power of suggestion?"

Bondurant shook his head ashamed scared. "No. This was a woman. Last night. I heard a noise in the hall and followed it. When I cornered her and asked her what she was doing, she turned and disappeared into the wall."

Bondurant wiped his eyes, hoping to erase the memory of her face. But that long scar grinned at him still.

"She had a scar across her forehead" Bondurant said, the words large in the hushed room. "A lobotomy scar. Done from the top, not up through her nose."

"And her clothes? I suppose she was dressed in hospital garments." Kracowski smiled and spoke as if he were narrating a B-grade horror movie. "Naturally, since she must have been the ghost of a patient who died here long ago. Evil lives in the walls, doesn't it, Bondurant? Evil, evil, EVIL."

Swenson slapped at him. "Quit it, you're creeping me out."

Kracowski laughed. "I'm afraid our dear Francis has been working too many late nights."

To Bondurant, he said "Reading the Bible in the wee hours? Or is it the whiskey that fulfills your spiritual needs these days?"

Kracowski had commented on his drinking, Bondurant's well-kept secret, of which neither the Lord nor Wendover's directors would approve. But he couldn't answer in his defense because, through the small square of glass set in the conference room door, the crazy old woman was looking in, wearing her double grin. Kracowski, his back to the door, couldn't see. If indeed there was anything to see.

"I don't want to hear any more foolishness about ghosts," Kracowski said. "The breakthrough won't take much longer, so keep your head until then. All that matters is that I continue my treatments. For the good of the children."

"For the good of the children," Swenson said.

"For the good of the children," Bondurant echoed, smiling weakly back at the woman at the window. But she had already gone, into the wall or back through the mists of time. Or maybe into the arms of the dead.